Koppers Holdings Earnings Preview

Motley Fool Staff
Updated

Koppers Holdings (NYS: KOP) hasn't been able to establish an earnings trend, bouncing between beating and falling short of estimates during the past fiscal year. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday, Feb. 16. Koppers Holdings is a global integrated producer of carbon compounds and treated wood products for use in markets including the aluminum, railroad, specialty chemical, utility, rubber, concrete, and steel industries.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: The majority of analysts, 62.5%, back Koppers Holdings as a buy. But Koppers Holdings is still below the mean analyst rating of its nearest nine competitors, which average 64.9% buys. Analysts like Koppers Holdings better than competitor OM Group overall. One out of three analysts rates OM Group a buy compared to five out of eight for Koppers Holdings. While analysts still rate the stock a moderate buy, they are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.

  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $351.5 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 14.2% from the year-ago quarter.

  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.52 per share. Estimates range from $0.46 to $0.65.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are in strong support of the stock, with 96.4% assigning it an outperform rating. The community at large backs the All-Stars, with 93.7% awarding it a rating of outperform. Fools are gung-ho about Koppers Holdings, though the message boards have been quiet lately, with only 52 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of Koppers Holdings, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management:
Koppers Holdings' income has fallen year over year by an average of 12.4% over the past five quarters.

Now let's get some insight into how efficient management is at running the business. Traditionally, margins represent the efficiency with which companies capture portions of sales dollars. Koppers Holdings' net margins, which reflect what percentage of revenue becomes profit, have risen year over year for the last two quarters. Here is how Koppers Holdings has been doing for the last four quarters:

Quarter

Q3

Q2

Q1

Q4

Gross Margin

16.7%

15.9%

12.7%

12.7%

Operating Margin

10%

9.4%

5.8%

5.2%

Net Margin

5.6%

5%

2.5%

1.7%

One final thing: If you want to keep tabs on Koppers Holdings' movements, and for more analysis on the company, make sure you add it to your Watchlist.

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.

At the time thisarticle was published

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